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The World's Other Tyrants, Still at Work (Aryeh Neier, 4/05/03, NY Times)

With international attention focused on Iraq, despots are seizing the opportunity to get rid of their opposition--real or imagined. In Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus, independent journalists, opposition leaders and human rights advocates have been thrown in prison. Absent scrutiny, the leaders of these rogue regimes have been emboldened, aware that their actions are causing little more than a ripple of protest beyond their countries.

The outside world has ignored Zimbabwe, which is holding critical parliamentary elections whose outcome could help determine whether President Robert Mugabe will be able to amend the Constitution and handpick his successor. Since the start of the war in Iraq, Mr. Mugabe has intensified a campaign of intimidation, arresting more than 500 democracy advocates and opposition leaders, including Gibson Sibanda, vice president of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.

The campaign of state-sponsored violence is not limited to the opposition leaders in Zimbabwe. A worker on the farm of an opposition parliamentary deputy died of injuries after being beaten by Mr. Mugabe's security agents for participating in a two-day general strike. Other farm workers have also been beaten by men in army uniforms who claimed that the farms were being used as staging grounds for opposition activities. Hundreds of people accused of taking part in the strike were treated for broken bones in private clinics, fearing more reprisals if they sought care at public hospitals. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket for southern Africa, falls ever further into poverty and famine.

In Cuba, the war is giving Fidel Castro cover for an unprecedented assault. Over the past two weeks his state security agents have arrested about 80 dissidents. Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for 12 of those detained and 10- to 30-year prison terms for the rest. They include the economist Marta Beatriz Roque, the poet and journalist Raúl Rivero and the opposition labor activist Pedro Pablo Alvarez. [...]

If we let tyrants escape the international condemnation that is often the only way to protect their critics against abuses, the brutal campaigns in Zimbabwe, the clean sweep of dissidents in Cuba, and the arrests of demonstrators in Belarus may have to be added to the list of unintended consequences of the war in Iraq.

Why doesn't Mr. Neier ask that we remove Castro and Mugabe? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 5, 2003 10:45 PM